Don’t buy it for AAA games. It thrives on AA and indie games, but AAA games will suck the battery like crazy (on the original model, at least) and you’ll be lucky to get 60 frames on any AAA games from the last few years.

That it’s awesome

It comes with a free Portal-universe game that teaches you how all the controls work. It’s fun. Play it immediately. It will teach you that the thumbsticks are capacitive. Turns out that’s a useless feature, so just get some nice thumbstick caps that make them larger, more rubbery, and more comfortable.

I highly recommend a 180° USB-C adapter to use the power cord while playing. It makes the cord angle down instead of up, which feels more natural. Plus, I feel like it would be gentler on the cord and USB-C port if the cord got tugged hard when plugged into an adapter instead of directly into the Steam Deck.

Plus, with a 180° adapter, you can keep the Deck in it’s case while charging. Normally you can’t do this because the top of the Steam Deck faces the hinge of the case. But the adapter fits in the case OK and reroutes the wire downward. It definitely raises the deck up slightly, but you can still zip the case halfway closed. I do this because I live in a very small apartment with a high chance of knocking or spilling something onto the Steam Deck if I were just to leave it laying around.

Fun fact: the touch pads don’t actually click when you press them like a button, but you will swear they do! The haptic feedback mechanism is incredibly good.

Major Overheating Issue

I don’t know how this is not a more widely complained-about problem.

I paired a Nintendo Switch Pro Controller to my deck, played a game, then put the deck in its case while asleep. (You tap the power button and the deck goes to sleep.) Well, apparently, “Wake on Bluetooth” is enabled by default and you can’t turn it off! So, I threw my Nintendo Switch controller in a drawer, and of course a button got hit. It woke up my Steam Deck in it’s case. I had a game running, so the Steam Deck starts rendering the game and creating a lot of heat that is just being circulated within the case by the fan. The Deck got insanely hot!

I noticed it sometime later only because I heard it make a sound. When I took it out, I used my infrared thermometer to measure the back of the deck, and it was over 140° F. Uncomfortable to touch! It would have sat there for hours like that if I hadn’t noticed.

Solution: I had to install the Decky Loader plugin system in order to install a plugin that disables Wake on Bluetooth. I still don’t see any way to disable it without using Decky. Decky is pretty great though, and it has tons of cool plugins. Of course, you could also just turn off Bluetooth before putting this Steam Deck in its case, but if you forget, it’ll be a problem.

Sleep takes battery even if nothing is running. It’s big so if you will play only steam deck for a while after that every controller would feel small and nintendo switch would feel like baby toy.

Simple stuff to prevent you from panicking early on:

• Say you’re playing docked with an external controller and you put your steam deck to sleep while playing a a game. After it wakes up the next time you use it, 99% of the time, the game won’t respond to the controller input anymore. You need to reorder the controllers in the menu and it’ll come good again. Only in extremely rare cases have I had to restart the game.
• Less so now, but early on there were definitely cases where I had to power cycle the steam deck because something went wrong. Even if the screen is black for a bit, just give it some time.
• There’s years of tips/tricks or software mods that people have collected that may/may not be relevant anymore. Just play it for a week or two before tweaking things. For instance, I love Decky loader for adding things like protondb support and how long to beat times to the library… but you definitely don’t need it.

If you do decide to play docked, Sony Dualshock 4 or Dualsense 5 controllers are great because they have touchpads. This makes them super useful in games with half implemented controller support (i.e. the games work fine but the menu controls still use a mouse) or using desktop mode from the couch. They also have gyro support too.

I haven’t had many issues with PC usb-c hubs… but all hubs are created differently. If you care about 4K output, VRR, HDR or anything above basic usage, I found a dedicated jsaux docking station works pretty well (note: I never considered the official dock as it was only officially available in my country well after I already had a steam deck).

The steam deck is somewhat old (2022) and VERY VERY VERY BULKY <-- I have difficulties holding it in my small hands

Go to a store and check out similar products from other brands to see if you like the grip

Also, only buy linux based/ linux compatible consoles

The steam deck is an excellent product, with great repairability, amazing software and the touchpads are a godsend. But if you are never going to use it because of it’s size, alternatives are worth considering

If you decide to go with the deck, buy a silicone case for it. The JSAUX one is great, albeit only available in black as far as I know

About this super handy Kick stand

You might want to upgrade your couch & TV. If you’re used to playing at a desktop, it doesn’t feel right to play a handheld in your gaming chair. You can plop down in a big comfortable couch, put on a TV show or movie in the background, and grind through whatever game you like that runs decent.

It’s good for when someone else wants to watch a tv show you don’t care about, so you pop out your deck and spend time together doing separate things that interest you.

Remember your admin password if you mess around on the Linux side.

Controversial opinion, but if cost isn’t an issue then a steam deck isn’t a great buy. It fills a niche for sure but honestly a gaming laptop with a gamepad is 100% more useful IMHO.

I struggled to find it anymore portable than a laptop is and worse performance/screen/utility in almost every measurable way.

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If you are planning to buy steam DOCK, don’t. It has been a complete shitshow.

Updates fails dozen times before finishing without crashing. Sometimes you need to disconnect power, so it switches to deck power for the update process even start and same trick works, if the dock refuses to see the external displays. Connect power back after it spasms in the right direction.

30 euro garbage from local supermarket works better.

Look into framegen. It actually works quite well and can make the difference between 40 fps not stable to 60 fps stable. It will introduce some artifacts, but on this screen size they are quite negligible.

Omg these stupid posts are plaguing Lemmy now

The multi user experience is really bad if you share any games

If you aren’t familiar with Linux I would spend a little bit of time in a BASH shell playing around with commands. You really don’t want to be stuck in a scenario where your steam deck cannot boot, for some random reason, and all of sudden you know no commands to troubleshoot with or a brief idea on the structure of the filesystem.

I don’t own a steam-deck personally but I always recommend this advice for anyone moving into the Linux ecosystem.

Best of luck.

Edit: Seems like SteamOS is on a whole other level of stable, while I still recommend this advice it certainly isn’t mandatory. Thanks to others who provided feedback.